Recently a police chief in New Hampshire decided when the federal government balked at enforcing immigration policies, he charged a man classified as an undocumented alien with criminal trespass.

I know immigration is the third rail of politics, an off limit topic in casual discussion, and this blog isn’t really political, but one statement caught my attention.

Police Chief Chamberlain said. “It’s basically a situation here where right now if you make it past the border patrol, you’re free and clear. There’s no interior enforcement for illegal immigration in the United States.”

His statement begs two questions. First, does INS enforce immigration laws beyond the borders? I don’t work for the INS, and I don’t know anyone who does, but deportations are rare events. The INS is a small agency relative to many others. Second, does the INS matter at this point?

From our founding, the United States has had a passive/aggressive relationship with immigration. Many feel there’s “too much”, but then, unless your last name is Bush or Kerry, odds are good your relatives first touched soil long after the Puritans ran aground on Plymouth Rock. In the same breath, we celebrate the country as a melting pot of cultures and ideas, a bulwark of diversity and ethnicities. Hundreds of years of immigration hardly destroyed this country.

So the question is, is the policy of non enforcement a conscious decision by INS, or does it reflect a national value? When Police Chief Chamberlain describes a “lack of interior enforcement” – is that merely a statement of fact, and we both missed a national debate, or is there a serious policy violation? Maybe it’s just cheaper to ignore the laws than adjust them.

A serious thought for hump day, I know.

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One key ingredient among thrillers, regardless of the underlying writing style, is the cliff-hanger. Webster defines the device as “an adventure serial or melodrama presented in installments each ending in suspense”. A spot on definition. The natural bookend to the hook, or lead-in, a good cliff-hanger leaves the reader wanting more.

After seven months of working on Velocity it’s my conclusion that ending every chapter with a cliff-hanger is a very difficult task, the opposite of what I expected. This is not for want of examples. Most television shows use the technique, and I’ve certainly watched my share of those. Films do it, and I’ve read a few dozen thrillers in the last few years. How hard could it be really? To me, pretty rough going, but part of the process.

Why bother so much with cliff-hangers? It all comes back to my single biggest obstacle: a lack of focus. Not that I can’t focus at the keyboard, but exploring the back story of a character, even where it isn’t necessarily part of the story is very tempting. Extremely tempting at times. Runaway narrative is fun for the writer, not so nifty for the reader.

And that’s where cliff-hangers come in, because thinking in terms of short, tight scenes impels focus. It forces a thorough consideration of the beginning, middle and end at the scene level. Focus is the means and a natural byproduct of the exercise.

While some cliff-hangers in Velocity are more dramatic than others, with twenty-three chapters in the can, I believe the the results are worth the time. So I’ll keep at them.